We turned up a little bit annoyed for our match way down south. The road works on the A51 meant we had to go off route and miles out of way to get to the ground. This may explain the number of times the players ran off the pitch in their attempts to score. The attacking flair and precision with which we usually enter our matches these days seemed to have been trying to find its way to C&N from deepest Northwich. Crewe seemed to notice this and proceeded to take the first match more comfortably than expected. 8-5 to the home team was the score in that game, our rally towards the end not quite enough to overcome the early lead we had given the opposition in such a friendly manner (though this may have been to do with the raucus created by the 'conversations' that happened following our last match - interclub relations and all that (should that be intraclub? - nevermind)). Incidentally, tries in this game were scored by Will, Guy and Dan who all got 1 each and Joe who helped himself to a brace.
The second game showed much more of what we are capeable of at present, both going forward and in defense. Plenty of excellent tries and a porous defensive line. However, it must be said that by now the C&N coaching team (nice guys by the way - especially the rather huge one who I annoyed in no way whatsoever :-) ) were beomming a little frustrated by the little errors their team had seemingly caught from our boys. I didn't think running off the pitch and throwing the ball forward was something that could be caught. Maybe this was their way of ensuring interclub relations, going well upto then, continued on a high note. Either way, the Annies took the second game 11-8 with tries coming from Alex, Dan with 2 and Will and Guy who both got 4 apiece.
And so it was with everone, except the coaches, happily moving on to game 3. By the way, I was so annoyed with some of the most frustrating decision making to date (by our players) that I was going through the alphabet saying words beginning with each letter. For some reason though I couldn't get past the letter 'f' and had to start again. It was obviously getting to me a lot as parents were constantly telling me that I had a vein close to popping in my forehead. Anyway, as I was acting like a kid and throwing tantrums down the touchline, we apparantly came close to winning the last match, though we came in second with the score being 8-7 to C&N. Joe, Dan and Guy all getting 1 each and Alex having a great time scoring 4 (obviously getting a taste for it in the previous encounter).
I think it is safe to say that the decision making in attack and the porosity of the defensive line cost us a match we really should have won. However, from the training session that followed a week later (this was written 2 weeks late!!) a porous defense might well be something we get rid of when we play contact matches next season.
All in all, for me, a frustrating day, but I'm pretty sure it was just a blip.